The first 3 Mary Russell books are definitely the best.
But I sure didn't see the assault-y part coming. At all. Kind of shook me up.
This is also exactly how I feel.
It's just -- I didn't expect the format of the entire book to be the way it was, with the flashbacks to Julia's magic training (for want of a better term), but I *loved* her backstory. LOVED. Right up to the OMGWHATISHAPPENING part. (And -- I was never quite sure about this -- was it anal, or just rear entry? I mean, sure, rape is rape, particularly by a mean trickster god, so I'm not at all trying to split hairs to say one is less horrific than the other. Mostly, I couldn't tell from the text what was what, and wondered how other people read it.
Tep, I'm still leery. I was a bit put off by the gender relationships in the first book, so I think I'm going to keep away from the 2nd.
The weird thing for me is that I *wanted* to love the first book, and found it fairly pretentious and lacking substance. So I didn't expect to like the second, and wouldn't have read it, but we were on vacation with Tim's family, and his college senior-aged niece (who is a nerdy Buffista spirit baby, and whose opinion I trust) had it with her and loved it, so I borrowed it. (Plus, I had The Night Circus with me, and she ganked it from me before I could even start it, so I figured I might as well read her book.)